


Becoming Water

by Orockthro



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Author plays fast and loose with Witcher geography, Curses, F/F, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Geralt/Jaskier implied, Happy Ending, The Witcher Kink Meme, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans!Geralt, Transgender Geralt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:27:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23305294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orockthro/pseuds/Orockthro
Summary: When Geralt was a child his mother kissed his forehead, wove flowers in his hair, and let him dance around the campsite they shared with the other druids. He loved dancing, the way his body moved and flowed; he was like water.And then she left him in the road, spilled water on his feet, and a faint trail of dust where she and the cart were no longer. And a man came and took Geralt and made him into something new.“Were you short? Waifish? Did those witcher mutagens turn you into, you know, the hulking sexy man that you are? At least they gave you such male perfection, what with the stubble and the jaw and the--”“Shut up, Jaskier.”(Or, Geralt is cursed with a female body during their travels. Only it's not so much a curse as a gift she didn't know she so desperately desired until now.)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 51
Kudos: 504
Collections: Witcher Kink Meme (Dreamwidth)





	Becoming Water

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt (summed up): Trans!Geralt. AMAB Geralt gets bespelled to be female bodied and realizes she’s been a woman all along. (https://witcherkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/429.html?thread=220589#cmt220589 )
> 
> A/N: Although I’m trans-spectrum, I’m not trans!femme. <3 I write this with love and from a point of view of knowing what it feels like to be not quite right in one’s body. Dear anon from the kinkmeme, please have this gift. I hope it is what you want for our lovely Geralt.  
> These times are scary. I hope this brings you comfort.

When Geralt was a child his mother kissed his forehead, wove flowers in his hair, and let him dance around the campsite they shared with the other druids. He loved dancing, the way his body moved and flowed; he was like water.

And then she left him in the road, spilled water on his feet, and a faint trail of dust where she and the cart were no longer. And a man came and took Geralt and made him into something new. 

\---

Jaskier has half a loaf of sourdough shoved in his face and a sizable wedge of hard cheese ready to follow it up, when he somehow says around the food, “Witchers get made, right? Is it like the mages at Aretuza? You go in as a gangly teen and then, wham, you’re a witcher?” He also manages to not inhale the food while he talks. The man is nothing but improbabilities wrapped up in a silk doublet. 

“Hm,” Geralt says, and chews his own food slowly. The fire they’re sitting by isn’t big, and the area they are in is damp and unpleasant, but nothing is attacking them. It could be worse. Night is coming but hasn’t quite set yet and the evening hovers in that sanguine time of in-between. It’s a beautiful time of the night to listen to the forest sounds. 

So of course Jaskier keeps asking questions.

“Were you short? Waifish? Did those witcher mutagens turn you into, you know, the hulking sexy man that you are?” 

“Shut up, Jaskier.”

“At least they gave you such male perfection, what with the stubble and the jaw and the--”

“I said. Shut. Up.”

It must be something in his voice. He’s sure he bares his teeth, too, and his lips are wide and curled back like an animal’s. And by the time he’s calmed he also realizes he’s standing and he doesn’t remember getting up off the damp log.

Jaskier quiets and they don’t speak again for several hours.

\---

Geralt has no idea what he would look like without the mutagens or the witcher school or the scars. No idea whatsoever. He has no conception of what color his eyes were before, or his hair, though his mother’s was dark. 

Perhaps he’d be brown-eyed, or green. Maybe he’d have long dark hair like his mother’s. 

\---

It happens when they are finished with a contract, and Geralt is warm and fed and not paying as much attention as he should. Vesemir would whip him for it, but Vesemir isn’t here, only Jaskier. Jaskier who is laughing into his cup, his cheeks flushed pinker than the wine. 

“Did you know, one time I sang her a ballad of her beauty and the Countess de Stael, she came from that alone.” 

He’s recounting his conquests, as he does sometimes when he’s drunk. Honestly Geralt doesn’t mind as much as he used to. He’s grown accustomed to the bard’s endless yammering to the point that the silence when they part ways feels empty. Vesemir would whip him for that, too.

“I couldn’t help but sing to her of her beauty. She, gods, Geralt, she is womanly perfection. Her skin is soft and clear, except for a few freckles and a particularly charming birthmark. And her hands are so wondrously long-fingered and slender. She smiles and the world just...” He pauses for dramatic effect. “Stops.”

Geralt grunts. 

He’s grown accustomed to the bard’s endless yammering but he’s tired and this subject leaves his chest tight. He doesn’t begrudge Jaskier his perfect womanly muse. It’s simply tiring, that’s all. And boring. Geralt stands, leaves a coin on the table for his drink, and goes up the stairs to the room they’ve rented without a further word. 

And this is when it happens: when he’s loose from drink, warm from a hot meal, and satisfied with a job well done and well paid. And frustrated and tired and feeling something he can’t quite put to words. 

He lays down to sleep, half his armor propped against the wall and half laid out on the floor for quick access like he’s always been taught, and he dreams fitfully. 

He dreams of Kaer Morhen. 

A boy he doesn’t remember, likely long dead, stares at him with doe-brown eyes. He holds out a sprig of spring grass, an offering. 

Geralt takes it. 

\---

Once, Geralt saw himself in a proper mirror. He was in a whore’s room and she had a beautiful circular mirror set up in the corner, alongside a pot of red paint for her lips. While she slept he sat down on the little stool and looked at himself. 

He saw the scar across his face, his yellow eyes, his hairline, his square jaw, his large chin, his thick eyebrows. 

He doesn’t see many mirrors in his line of work, and he doesn’t seek them out, either.

\---

Geralt wakes because Jaskier’s heartbeat doubles, thumping loudly in his chest like war drums. It’s enough to pull him from his light doze to full wakefulness and he’s upright and reaching for his swords before he realizes there are still just the two of them in the room. 

“What is it?”

“Um.”

Geralt flicks his eyes to Jaskier but the bard appears to be in one piece. He’s in a jumble next to the bedding he’s piled up near the hearth, sleeping as he often does in a strange approximation of a nest, just one more part of him that is chaotic. His heartbeat is still racing though, Geralt can still hear it from the small bed he’s commandeered for himself. 

He’s never known Jaskier to be silent, though. It’s... disconcerting. He keeps flicking his eyes to the corners of the room, waiting for some wraith to appear, but one never does.

Eventually Jaskier speaks again: “Geralt?”

“What?”

And then Geralt hears it. His voice is different. Gone is the rasp, the deep sound like grinding stones. Instead his voice is clear and light. 

He looks down. 

He drops the sword he’d grabbed and the silver clatters against the floorboards. 

“Fuck.”

\---

Yennefer, when they find her days later, is of no help. 

“I’m not a curse breaker,” she says, but she doesn’t stop looking at Geralt, like he’s something new and wild. It’s the first time she’s looked at him like an equal. It sends a thrill down his spine. 

\--

Geralt spends the first night alone. He says, “Fuck,” and then to Jaskier, “Don’t say anything. Stay there,” and flees into the night. He leaves Roach dozing in the stables down the dirt road should Jaskier need her. But Geralt cannot be with anyone right now. 

He runs on legs that are different but still strong. Still his. 

He finds a stream, five or six miles out of town and far enough away that he can’t smell anything but a few deer and the usual nighttime animals scurrying about. Geralt doesn’t light a fire; his eyesight is still enhanced, and the moon is nearing full anyhow. He drops his armor to the ground without care for its maintenance, and then drops his clothes as well. They fit so poorly it’s almost a blessing when they’re gone from his body. 

As he stands by the water and looks down he sees for the first time not the body that was made by the witcher school, molded in someone else’s image, but something different.

His hands are still calloused, rough from years of abuse, hard living, and swinging heavy swords for his supper. And his legs and arms are still taught with muscle, hard earned. It’s still a body meant to run and hunt and swing a sword. 

But there is a soft curve to his hips now, a swing of flesh that rises up from the outside of his knee up to his waist and he runs his hands down his sides, reveling in it. And there is a swell at his chest, too. He hesitates, afraid of ruining it. But the breasts remain, lovely despite his touch. 

They’re not large; he doesn’t carry enough fat for that, he supposes, with the metabolism given to him by the mutagens. But they are present and carry his scars. They are his. 

But most shockingly is his body hair. The hair on his legs is finer, softer, and the hair on his chest gone all together. He is smooth, with exception of where acid, blade, and teeth have marred him, but this he is well used to. 

Geralt wades into the stream and lets the water wash him. When he stands, wet and with his heart beating faster than designed, he feels birthed anew. 

\---

When the sun starts to crest in the morning he returns to the village dressed again in the ill fitting clothes. His shirt and armor pieces are too tight at the chest, too loose where his body now dips at the waist, and although he’s still tall and broad, the pants need rolling. The swords on his back, though, those feel right, though he may have to adjust where the buckle rests. 

“Come on bard, we’re leaving,” he says after he collects the man, their things, and leads them down the stairs of the inn towards the stable. 

Jaskier, of course, opens his mouth and the gentle world Geralt freshly inhabits crashes back into the world he left behind.

“Um, Geralt, I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but--”

“No.”

“No? No, what, exactly? No, you are not in fact in the body of a woman? Because I hate to tell you, you definitely are, and I have much experience--”

Jaskier prattles on and Geralt ignores him and lets him. This, at least, has not changed. 

\---

After they find Yennefer, and after she tells them that whatever or whomever has cursed Geralt is not within her ability to reverse, nothing changes.  Geralt simply inhabits this new body. Despite what Jaskier babbles on about-- curses this, loss of manhood that-- it is not horrible in the least. 

There are contracts to fulfill, monsters to hunt, and ale to be drunk. This body is as finely suited to these tasks as the one before. Instead of wanting nothing, Geralt wants  _ for _ nothing. 

He’s content.

\---

“So you’re just going to be a woman? I mean, it hasn’t worn off.” 

They’re in the wilds again, much like old times. A fire is rumbling gently between them, and Jaskier is lit hawkishly from below, glowing. The pleasant smell of roast pheasant fills the air but Jaskier’s question sours his appetite. 

Roach, at least, isn’t treating him any differently. She snuffled around him oddly that first morning, huffing twice and pawing the ground, but once he’d said, “Steady, girl,” she’d accepted he was Geralt, new voice or not, and that was that. 

Jaskier, though... Jaskier remains confused. And for all that he wishes the man would simply stop talking, Geralt understands this. He, too, is confused. 

“Don’t see why it matters.”

“It doesn’t bother you? To be suddenly different?”

Geralt chews on a piece of meat, mechanically eating it despite his lack of hunger. It’s tough and mostly tasteless-- spring is starting to poke up from underneath the leaves, but the game is still rangey hungry, much like himself. They were lucky to catch what they did. 

“Not the first time it’s happened, Jaskier.”

“You’ve been cursed before?”

He looks the man dead in the eye, and there’s a satisfying moment when he sees him understand. 

“Hm.”

Geralt expects that to be the end of it. But Jaskier, despite being a buffoon, is not an idiot, nor particularly cruel. He says gently, “If you want I can tailor your clothes?”

It's unexpected, but very appreciated and quite thoughtful as well. Geralt had been planning on wearing the clothing as-is until they reached Toussaint, as he had no skill with the needle himself. "Alright.”

Jaskier does it in the morning when the light is clear and fresh, fishing a small pouch containing a sturdy bone needle and several lengths of wound thread from the pack he keeps on Roach’s back. 

“Stand up tall, witcher,” and then, as he takes in Geralt’s full form, “gods, you’re still tall as a house aren’t you.”

The process is not terrible. Jaskier’s hands are quick and efficient, from long years of mending his own clothes on the road from the various maladies brought on by adventure. He holds the needle between his lips, brows furrowed, as he draws the clothes closer to Geralt’s body while still leaving ample room for movement. He sews wide stitches in place on the outside, “to mark the new measurements,” as he explains it, and then stands back to survey his work. 

“There,” he says. “Now if you’ll just hand them over I’ll sew them up properly.” 

Geralt strips out of the clothes without another thought-- he’s never been body shy before and he isn’t now either. Jaskier blushes but stares at him without blinking as he hands over his clothes. He doesn’t balk. He doesn’t make his usual comments, either. He simply accepts what Geralt hands him, and something stirs in Geralt at this exchange. 

“Your scars are still there.”

“Yes. As are my eyes, my hair, and my swords. Just not  _ that _ sword. Now stop staring and sew.” But there’s no bite to the words. 

When Jaskier returns them the clothes fit well, allow him to jump, skitter away from enemies, and slash without ripping a stitch. Geralt smiles at him and Jaskier, slowly at first but then truly, smiles back. 

\---

Two and a half weeks into the curse Geralt realizes something. 

“Fuck.”

Jaskier stops dead in his tracks, and so does Roach and therefore Geralt. 

“What? What’s going on?” Jaskier says, and casts his eyes about for bandits or some such. He was humming softly, but the silence now rings in Geralt’s ears. 

Geralt sits astride Roach and looks down at the way her legs straddle the saddle. How her arms, thinner and the hair much finer, deftly hold the reigns. How her shoulders, narrower but still broad and strong, hold her swords at the ready. 

She likes this new world she’s been given to inhabit. It feels right and good. When she moves, it feels like she’s dancing. 

It isn’t a curse. It’s a gift.

“Nothing,” Geralt lies. She nudges Roach forward with her knees and leaves Jaskier to catch up as they trot forward a few paces. 

\---

Geralt still doesn’t know what she would look like without the witcher mutagens, without their hand changing her hair, her eyes, her body from the ground up. She’ll never have a chance to experience that life. 

What she knows instead is how her body is now: lithe and with powerful curves, strong and hard and soft all at once. She likes it. 

They say witchers don’t have emotions, but what they mean is that the emotions have been ground down to nubs, washed like rocks in a stream until smooth and without edges. But looking at herself, Geralt feels sharp again. 

She beds a whore three towns later when Jaskier is off chasing a conquest of his own. She lets the woman touch her. First her collarbone, tracing a scar that’s so old it’s nearly invisible. And then her breasts and ribs and hips and cunt. 

Sex, for the first time, doesn’t feel perfunctory. It is not a means to an end, but a process to enjoy, to revel in. Her skin is alight. She is alight. 

When she comes, Geralt cries. The whore, a kind woman a few years older than Jaskier with crow’s feet and laugh lines, looks down at her, horrified, but Geralt smiles, pays her twice her fee, and leaves in the morning.

\---

Yennefer finds her a few months later. Jaskier startles like a cat, hisses like one, too, but no blood is shed, and the three of them manage to occupy a border town without setting the place ablaze for the few days their travels overlap.

Yennefer, dressed in black and white and power smiles at Geralt when Jaskier isn’t looking and says very quietly under her breath, “I’ve looked into some things for you. This curse of yours piqued my interest--”

“I’m not something to interest you.”

Yennefer smiles, and her red lips part so very prettily. It is, unfortunately, distracting. As is that scent of lilacs again. “You’ve always interested me, Geralt. Before and now, both.”

“Hm. Well don’t waste your time, mage, I’ve no interest in a cure.”

She regards Geralt up and down, and Geralt regards her back. 

“Very well.”

They sit in silence for a while. Jaskier will return shortly and the world is pleasant here, in this in-between land. The town is a little dust pit that borders Temeria and Aderin, existing only to mark the line and remind travelers where they went and where they are going. There’s hardly so much as a tavern and a stable, let alone the blacksmith Geralt actually needs to find in order to re-fashion some of his tack to better suit his new body. But it is a way point and a place to rest Roach for a day while the weather is still cold at night and they could all use a hay bale to sleep in. 

“It won’t disappear, if that’s what you’re afraid of.” 

“Hm.”

“No relief? No professing of your thanks?”

There is, though she won’t admit it to Yennefer. Something unfurls in Geralt’s belly and stays there, loose and content and relieved. A fear released. 

\---

Five weeks into the curse which is not a curse at all, Geralt says, “Jaskier,” and the bard looks up from the parchment he’s scribbling on with an ostentatious quill. His finery, most of which is bartered for, not purchased, Geralt is well aware, looks out of place in most of the towns they pass through, but this one not so much as others. At least here people have enough to eat. Children have that round fullness to their faces in the streets, and chimneys puff up firewood smoke, not billowed black smoke from scraps of whatever families can find to burn. 

It’s a good place to hole up for a few weeks, which is what they’re doing, waiting for the summer to hit and resting while they can. Or, drinking while they can, as the case may be, as where they are holed up is also the local tavern. 

“What? I almost have this line. What sounds better with goose: ‘my muse’ or ‘thy truths’?”

“Neither, it’s a terrible song. Treat me like a woman.”

“What?” And then, a second later. “What?”

Geralt downs a tankard of ale and motions the barkeep to bring her a second, laying down a generous payment and a clear, “leave us alone,” air when it’s dropped off. 

Geralt stares at Jaskier until the bard clears his throat. “Are you sure?” 

Geralt shrugs. “Yes.”

“I’m your very best friend in the whole wide world, Geralt,” Jaskier says, and Geralt rolls her eyes, hard. “What I’m trying to say is that, well, you are my friend and I will do anything for you. Including be cursed and maimed by a djinn--”

“That wasn’t ‘for’ me.”

“Semantics. But if you wish to be thought of as well as seen as a woman, so be it. We have met with far stranger things in our travels than this.” And then, slyly, “If you wish, I can even sing of your beauty as I did for the Countess de Stael.”

Geralt smiles. It might still look a little wild, her teeth are still bared and her face scarred, but she’s happy. This body is hers. She runs a finger across the rim of the tankard and marvels at it. She’s killed men and monsters with these hands, and she sees nothing but grace in them now. Jaskier sees that beauty, too, and it sends a thrill through her, to be so looked upon. Not as a monster or a killer or an oddity, but as a woman. 

“My muse, thy truths, this goose?”

Jaskier smiles back, slier still, “Oh, I think I can come up with something better yet. For you, dear witcher, are indescribable and I love nothing more than a challenge.” 

\---

Later, years later, there is a famous song that gets bandied about when the candles burn low at night. The melody is soft and slow and sensual and changes depending on where it's sung, but the words are clear and free from bluster and show. It’s a song about a woman, tall and white haired with beautiful yellow eyes and a mouth like quicksilver who moves through the world like water. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love!


End file.
